Dr Miriam Johnson

Undergraduate Teaching:

• Creative Industries
• Media Marketing and Business

Postgraduate Teaching:

• Sales, Marketing, and Consumer Insight
• Dissertation and Major Project

Miriam’s professional career includes work as a second hand bookseller, founder of The Istanbul Review, and in working with Scottish PEN and Scottish Book Trust, as well as developing an immersive literature project in Edinburgh in conjunction with The Bridge Awards and Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature (echoesofthecity.com).

Her academic research blurs the lines between creative writing and publishing in digitally social settings. In her PhD at Edinburgh, she specialised in poetry and the role of rap music in modern poetic rhythms.  

In her PhD at Brookes and in subsequent publications, she has written about the place where social media and the publishing industry come together. Including how these new outlets give rise to new types of authors, the role of community, and the issues of gender and power that hover just under the surface in both the traditional publishing industry and within the communities in digital settings.

Her current research interests extend the role of the author by looking at performance of authorship in cross-platform digital spaces. 

Miriam is also on the steering committee of the Creative Industries Research Innovation Network (CIRIN).

I'd be very keen to hear from those looking to research any aspect of the following topics - as they relate to the world of publishing:

• social media
• marketing
• gender
• power dynamics
• performance in online spaces
• online writing communities (from Wattpad to AO3 and everything in between)
• food writing.

And if you fancy researching horses or cowboys in the industry, I'd be interested in that too.

• 'Literary Festivals, Social Media, and the Move to Digital', Oxford Brookes, March 2021.
• ‘The Power to Publish’, at By the Book 6, Florence, Italy. June 2019.
• ‘The Edge of the book’, at HPC Borders Conference, Oxford, UK, January 2019.
• ‘The Role of Gender in Writing in Digitally Social Communities’, at By the Book 5, Florence, Italy. June 2018.
• ‘The Rise of the Citizen Author’, at By the Book 4, Florence, Italy. June 2017.
• ‘The Creative Possibilities of the Book in the Digital Age’, at New Directions in Print Culture Studies conference, Oxford Brookes University. May 2017.
• ‘Is the Future of Publishing Social? Social Media Content As A Slush Pile For Shifting Publishing Model’, at TDE Research Conference, Oxford Brookes University. May 2016.
• ‘The Changing Definition of a Book and Digital Platforms As Collaboration’, at the Creative Collaboration Symposium, Middlesex University. November 2015.
• ‘The Literary Journal in Modern Publishing’, at New Horizons in the Cultural Industries. May 2013.
• ‘The Draw of the UK PhD in Creative Writing’, at The Playful Paradox Creative Writing Conference, Luton, UK. May 2009.  Paper published online at http://cwparadox.wikidot.com/papers.

You can keep up with Miriam’s work and projects on her site Booksaresocial.com and follow her at @MiriamJ801.